Utopia Now! A Conference

Artwork by Marco Brambilla

This international conference sets out to explore the possibility of utopian imagining today, at a time when so many of our social, political and environmental conditions are in crisis.

The conference brings together writers and thinkers from across disciplines, to produce a mobile critical picture of the condition of utopian thought now. The keynotes (Ali Smith, Kiran Desai, Homi Bhabha) bring literary fiction into dialogue with philosophy and critical theory. The panels bring together writers and thinkers from the environmental humanities, the medical humanities, linguistics, film studies, literary studies and political theory, among other disciplinary formations.

In exploring the possibility of utopian thought today, the conference will offer a fresh reflection on the ways in which our aesthetic, critical and discursive forms are able to summon pictures of a better world.

Registration opens soon.

Provisional programme: 

Friday 13th November

5:00pm - 6:00pm: Marco Brambilla in Conversation

7:00pm - 9:00pm:  Screening of Bernhard Schirg, dir., Frozen Atlantis

Saturday 14th November

9:00am - 5.30pm: Registration and panels

6:00pm - 7:00pm: Keynote 1: Ali Smith, ‘Brave Now World: Ali Smith in conversation with Peter Boxall’

Sunday 15th November

11:00am - 3:30pm: Panels

4:00pm - 5:30pm: Keynote 2: Homi Bhabha

6:30pm - 7:30pm: Keynote 3: Kiran Desai in conversation with Homi Bhabha